This invention is generally related to the field of automated preparation and maintenance of incident crisis response plans of the type kept by educational, state and local governmental institutions, or other institutions.
In recent years, a number of high profile acts of violence and other crises have occurred in public school and other institutional settings, gaining the attention of media and large segments of the public. For this and other reasons, a large and growing number of municipalities have required that public school administrators create detailed crisis response plans and make them available in each school and district office for use during a crisis. Crisis response plans are written procedures with explicit intent to protect and sustain life, reduce emotional trauma, assist in emotional recovery from trauma, and minimize personal injury and/or damage to the school facilities in the event of a crisis incident. Given the uncertainties often facing officials responsible for the safety of large groups of people, the preparation of such crisis plans represents a sensible course of action, even in those school districts where such crisis response plans are not mandated, or in other public and private institutions.
Unfortunately, school administrators and other public officials have many duties, not the least being, creating and working with considerable amounts of paperworkxe2x80x94paperwork that includes creating, maintaining and publishing crisis response plans. Crisis response plans usually require the participation of a number of individuals, and require that data be gathered relating to procedures to be followed by those individuals, lists of needed supplies, contact information for outside resource organizations, lists of vital records, details of locations for evacuation purposes, and any additional documents. Thus, the preparation of a comprehensive crisis response plan often involves the use of significant time and expense which would otherwise be devoted to other projects.
In an effort to address this problem, school administrators have used generalized business software, such as word processors, spread sheets and database programs to aid in developing crisis response plans. Clearly, the use of such well known tools may enhance productivity and increase the efficiency of any project as compared with manual entry, organization and distribution of crisis data.
Unfortunately however, none of these computerized tools are specifically customized to the creation, maintenance and distribution of crisis response plans. Thus for example, none of these tools actually guide users through the plan creation process. Furthermore, while these tools each aid in the completion of particular aspects of the crisis planning process (e.g., word processors for the creation of documents and data, database packages for the storage and organization of data), they are not integrated. Accordingly, users and Information Technology professionals may expend time and effort integrating and making compatible data created in differing computing environments. Moreover, in many schools and other institutions using crisis response plans, the entire crisis response plan is not located in a central location with many additional resource documents generally located in other places. When revisions to the crisis response plans are necessary, it often requires a major effort to make the changes, all of which are done manually.
Thus, what is needed is an integrated user-friendly automated system and process customized to aid in the creation, maintenance and distribution of crisis response plans, not only for schools, but for nay institution for which response plans are appropriate.
The present invention satisfies this need. Specifically, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, one or more client stations is connected in a network to a server. The client stations include user interface software elements adapted to guide a user through the process of creating, maintaining and distributing relevant crisis response information for a specified crisis incident (e.g., bomb explosion). Apart from manual data entry, the system allows importation of existing data files to fill in required entry fields using mapping methodology. Upon completion, user input data is forwarded to a server. Furthermore, upon being presented with one screen interface, the user is given a choice of expert pre-specified crisis plan templates to be used to produce and print a finished response plan for the specified incident. The pre-specified template is collected from a master data store and integrated into comprehensive, coherent crisis response data stored at a user data store.
Completed, integrated crisis response data at the user data store is adapted to generate useful reports the crisis incident selected by the user. Report(s) generated by the system for the selected crisis incident include a complete crisis response plan, with predetermined response scripts, texts, tasks, materials, methodologies, objectives, and/or evaluation criteria. In other embodiments, the system features a variety of complimentary reports and organized data output, including generic, non-incident specific crisis response plans; Faculty/Staff rosters; student rosters; supply and service reports; user forms and other documents. These are available to the user for further crisis response management, administrative reporting needs and overall time saving for the user.
Once completed, the reports may be printed. In alternative embodiments, the reports are published (i.e., distributed) by giving appropriate subsets of users at client stations access to data for reports at a user data store associated with the server. Where access to report data at the user data store is granted to subsets of users, access is restricted to data paid for or intended for the users. Server software elements differentiating data by user account and password protection techniques are called for this purpose.
Thus, one advantage of the present invention is that it further automates the crisis plan creation process, thus saving school and other officials"" time and effort.
Another advantage of the present invention is that it provides schools with expert developed best practice incident script templates which are coalesced with school or institution specific information provided by users, thus ensuring the completed plan comports with state of the art plan effectiveness criteria.
Another advantage of the present invention is that allows for the use of import files in connection with the data entry process, thus saving data entry time.
Another advantage of the present invention is that it allows electronic publication of output reports, thus reducing reliance on paper and improving the efficiency of report distribution.
Further advantages of the present invention are made apparent in the more detailed description below.